Essays, Vol. 1: Our Voice: Emotional Trauma & Spiritual Healing

The physical voice is the sound, vocabulary, and expression tool used in communicating ideas, desires, thoughts, and emotions. But what happens when a nonphysical trauma (i.e., emotional, psychological abuse, emotional trauma, etc.) renders a person mute? Is there a connection between the physical makeup of the voice and larynx and spiritual practices such as Chakra cleansing? How do spiritual practices and spiritual health play a role in nurturing and protecting our voice?

We must first look at the physical nature of the anatomy of the human voice and throat muscles. We then must find a connection between abstract emotions and vocal communication and vocabulary. Making that connection can give new insight into the practice of speech therapy, vocal instruction, and spiritual healing of both mute voices and the emotional trauma one has endured.

How Does the Voice Work?

Simply put, the voice is the sound of ourselves. It’s our way of communicating thoughts, ideas, and emotions through linguistic means. When we speak, our larynx—our vocal box—vibrates with the air being pulled in or out to create a sound. This air being pulled in is what speech therapists call the power source. This source is found throughout our lungs and diaphragm. We breathe air in and push it out, creating the sound through the vibration of our vocal cords.

It’s this function that gives us the power to communicate with the world around us. Our noses and sinuses are also interconnected with our mode of speaking. Sinus function acts as a resonator to the sounds produced by the vocal cords. Volume, vocal pitch, the way we pronunciate words, all these are directly related to the way our sinuses resonate the sounds being created.

When one or more of these complex parts gets damaged, let’s say a stroke patient, a speech pathologist will traditionally look at, assess, and work to help the patient strengthen the muscles that power all of these parts. From proper breathing to swallowing to helping the patient utilize the muscles in the mouth, a speech therapist will work with it all to help the physical voice become strong again.

How Does Emotion Relate to the Voice?

Emotions and emotionally-charged behavior stem from the right side of the brain. This part houses our emotional thought patterns, or feelings, our instinctive behavior, our intuition, and our artistic expression. Rationality and logic come from the left side of the brain, thus, when we are operating at an emotional level, our mode of verbal-linguistic thinking gets pushed aside for right-brain function. Have you ever noticed that when an artist is painting or drawing they find it hard to talk? This is because the right-brain function has no need for physical verbal communication while intuitive thought and emotion are in play.

But when we focus on emotions, whether positive or trying to heal negative, we can internalize the right-brain function so that we retain the feeling to later communicate through words—our left-brain function. We can hold the feeling or picture of something experienced, process it through analysis by left-brain function, and use our voices to communicate this process.

Ultimately, our voice is a gateway between logic and emotion. We are managing both sides of that coin while thinking of what to say before saying it.

How Does Trauma Effect the Voice?

When a person goes through some sort of physical trauma to the body—like a brutal car accident, a stroke, or a spinal injury—some systems suffer the damage. Traumas like these can have a direct effect on the delicate vocal system we use to communicate. Speech therapists are the voice healers in times of physical bodily trauma. They will assess which system of nerves and muscles have been damaged to create a treatment plan for voice healing.

Spiritual trauma, or emotional trauma as coined by medical professionals, can have a direct effect on the way a person vocalizes after that trauma. Abuse, such as physical and sexual abuse, can rend a victim’s emotional (and thus spiritual) well-being apart. PTSD resulting from combat, witnessing a brutal murder, or dealing with the aftermath of such abuse can also impact the way the voice works.

It goes back to the right-brain/left-brain function of our psyches. When a person suffers trauma so severe, the left-brain function is shoved completely aside. Right-brain function takes over, providing the instinctive need to fight, escape, or freeze. Freezing is a mechanism which takes hold when fighting isn’t an option and there is no way to physically escape. The mind creates its own escape by shutting down. Vocal expression egresses, and in some rare and extreme cases, stays that way.

Needless to say, people who’ve suffered traumatic emotional injuries sometimes have no words to either describe it or summarize the experience.

What Can Help Heal the Voice After Trauma?

Spiritual cleansing is often stigmatized as fanciful healing therapy by modern scientists. But the point remains, when the voice refuses to work after trauma, but no physical injury can be seen, another method must be used. This is where spiritual cleansing of the negative impact that experience had on the victim comes into play.

A speech pathologist who is sensitive to the complex interconnection between the spiritual driving force and the physical voice is a gifted vocal healer indeed. They will know to integrate Chakra healing with traditional voice therapy.

Guided meditation can help the victim find out what other energies are out of balance due to the trauma, and speech therapy can help to combine that knowledge with relearning how to communicate.

When the voice shuts down after heavy emotional trauma, the throat Chakra is telling the body that it no longer wants to communicate with other humans. The mind has been damaged, and the voice no longer feels safe in its verbal expression. The right-brain is reluctant to communicate with the left-brain in the event that the spirit will be hurt again. This will also relate to other Chakra systems, such as the heart, the solar plexus, and the sacral Chakras.

A spiritual healer can have a deep and lasting impact on how the person suffering through this can heal emotionally to mend the relationship with their spirit. When the fear is cleansed from the spiritual body and everything is brought back into balance, the desire to communicate from right-brain to left-brain will heal as well.

Spiritual healing effects the use of our voices. To keep our voice and communication healthy, we need to care for the physical as well as the spiritual force that drives our need to communicate verbally.